The current PHP feature voting process causes problems to those that do not know why features are approved or rejected by each voter. A better solution was proposed to require justification for each feature vote.

This was one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Cesar Rodas on the episode 34 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also discussed about the latest PHP releases, updating PHP with minimized downtime, as well how brilliant are some developers for creating pure PHP components that overcome PHP limitations without upgrading to a newer PHP version.

Listen to the podcast, or watch the hangout video or read the transcript to learn more about these interesting PHP discussions.

The fact that PHP has limitations does not mean that it is not possible to overcome some those limitations with alternative solutions that use only pure PHP code and do not require a newer PHP version.

Read this article to learn about many creative solutions that several PHP developers implemented to overcome some of the PHP limitations.

MySQL 5.6 GA version is finally available for download. One of its main features is the new NoSQL interface to access tables much faster than using SQL via a connection compatible of memcached.

MySQL 5.6 speed improvements and how it affects PHP applications was one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert on the episode 32 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also commented on the eventual adoption of the Zend Optimizer+ as the PHP code caching extension that may be shipping with PHP 5.5 as alternative to APC, the implications of this to the PHP community.

Other topics discussed in the podcast include the switch of OpenSuSE and Fedora Linux distributions from Oracle MySQL to MariaDB MySQL fork, the use of test driven development in the Zurmo PHP Open Source CRM, using advanced HTML5 based animations to get the attention of site users, and the launch of the JavaScript Innovation Award that just happened in the JSClasses site.

Listen to the podcast audio, or watch the podcast video, or read the podcast transcript to learn more about the details of these and other interesting topics.

As PHP 5.5 is getting ready to be released in the next months, the end of line for PHP 5.3 is being planned, while the original MySQL extension is being deprecated in PHP 5.5 to be killed in a later version.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing for PHP developers, was one of the main topics of debate between Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in the episode 31 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also discussed new PHP 5.5 features such as class variable type hinting and accessor functions, the apparent lack of interest of core developers to participate in the PHP FIG standards group, and what PHP developers have been searching for in 2012 by looking at the PHP Zeitgeist initiative.

Listen to the podcast now, or watch the podcast video, or read the audio transcript to learn more about these and other interesting PHP discussions.

Now that Facebook made some progress with their PHP HipHop VM JIT compiler engine, some PHP core developers are considering having also a JIT compiler implementation of the official implementation based on LLVM, eventually in PHP 6.

That was one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and CÚsar Rodas in the episode 30 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also commented on the first alpha release of PHP 5.5.0, proposals for having pure interfaces in the PHP core, the Facebook PHP JIT compiler enhancements, and the new system of levels and missions of the PHPClasses and JSClasses sites.

Listen the podcast, or watch the podcast video, or read the transcript to learn about these and interesting discussion of PHP matters.

PHP 5.5 release is already being planned. The release manager was picked, some of the new features are decided and the release date is estimated. This is one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in episode 28 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also discussed the interpretation from VentureBeat that Zend is working on mobile version of PHP, using abstract syntax trees to optimize PHP further, and creating classes that provide APIs that are simpler for the users.

Now listen to the podcast, or watch the podcast video or read the transcript to learn more about these and other interesting topics of the PHP world.

PHP applications popularity is so high that developers which prefer using other languages are trying to compile PHP code in languages like JavaScript and Python using new virtual machine projects.

That was one of the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert in the episode 27 of the Lately in PHP podcast.

They also cover the latest PHP releases and the new features planned for PHP 5.5, as well the new PHP elephant plush toys that were produced by the PHPClasses site to give away to the best contributors of the site.

Listen to the podcast, or watch the podcast video or read the transcript to learn about these and other interesting PHP topics discussed in this episode.